“Is your business suffering profit decline and morale decay due to the recession?
Perhaps, it’s time to try a new agenda. Perhaps it’s time to adopt the new but proven system that can bring you great business in tough times.
Martin Edelston’s I-POWER
The business system to rebuild America has just reached America’s booksellers in all 50 states. [Read more…]
What a great lead with a WIDE fishing net… ready to pull in almost any reader.
You can certainly see the influence of Paul Michael’s amazingly evergreen, “How You Can Make a Killing in Coins” in this direct mail package.
Few writers can condense so much persuasion, aimed at so many, into a one-page print ad, as Paul Michael did. [Read more…]
This was one of the most successful advertorial series of all time.
NGC Sports were BIG TIME in sport fishing and golf and had TENS of thousands of insertions in everything from local newspapers… to trade publications like Oklahoma Farm Bureau… all the way to Newsweek magazine and the Wall Street Journal.
These are advertorials that would make John Caples PROUD.
What happened to them? [Read more…]
This isn’t the kind of ad you see any longer today, neither on the West Coast of the United States nor the Gold Coast of Queensland.
But it’s one heck of a story selling ad.
“The date was 18th March 1983.
The curtain was about to go up on Demis Roussos’ new show. [Read more…]
(Yes, believe it or not, DVDs still play a role in lead generation, even today.)
Looking for business development and lead generation ideas for 2021?
Look no further than 2010!
Ecclesiastes proves right again: “Nothing is new under the sun!” [Read more…]
“In the early 70s, Mel Martin was hired as a copywriter by Herb Nagourney, the toothy publisher of The New York Times book division whose business was built on running coupon ads in unsold space in the Times. While there, Martin created what Edelston considered to be some of the greatest book advertising ever written. “I would love to go through the Times on microfiche and find those ads,” Edelston says. “Each was masterpiece.”
I’ll never forget the night I read that passage. [Read more…]
How do you sell a $14,615 piece of exercise equipment by space advertising?
Rom of North Hollywood, California has shown how since 1990. [Read more…]
Mere book?
Not on your life!
Book advertisers learned over a century ago that you should NEVER conceal the fact that your product is a book… when you’re selling a book.
Why?
Now matter how giant or accurate your claims may be… you don’t want your reader exclaiming to herself, “It’s just a book!” after she’s spent minutes reading your ad.
So it helps to set the record straight from the outset, just like this 1980 ad from Alexandria House does. [Read more…]
You know how penny stock pitches work.
What seems like it’s for offer is NOT the real thing being offered.
Have a look at Boiler Room on Paper… 5,832 Word Penny Stock Pitch for the lowdown on this market.
For now, here’s the latest penny pitch hitting mailboxes across America.
As per usual, this penny pitch leads with big promise + urgency. [Read more…]
Is this the most irresistible envelope teaser copy of 2021?
It’s a bit like juggling live hand grenades… with the pins removed.
These are bizarre times indeed, . [Read more…]
This is without a doubt one of the GREAT food membership newsletters that rides along with members’ quarterly product shipments.
And it hails from one of the greatest advertising copywriters ever to pick up a pen. [Read more…]
In February of 2010, (Yes, years ago but it was a great interview!) I had the chance to chat with author and former Ogilvy & Mather CEO, Ken Roman, at the invitation of my friend, Byrne Hobart. (I’m reposting with some edits in March of 2021.)
What did we talk about?
Byrne and I, of course, grilled him on his timeless advertising tome, The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising.
Like a typical, turbo-charged CEO, Ken called into the conference line from the back of a yellow cab cruising through the snow covered streets of Manhattan.
This is a book that tells the rest of the story about David Ogilvy, the most famous advertising man in the world, from someone who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him for decades.
More than just a book about Ogilvy, The King of Madison Avenue reveals the evolution of modern direct response advertising in the 20th Century. [Read more…]
This Weiss Research banner is all over the place in April 2021.
Here are both the VSL and the old school sales letter. [Read more…]
The product has been on the market since 1967.
The headline has been SELLING it by the bushel since 1977.
How does an ad sell for almost a half-century without the slightest sign of fatigue?
Here’s the instructive April 2021 full page insertion and it’s forbearer. [Read more…]
If one of the world’s best financial copywriters can spend two weeks preparing a sales pitch… and FALL on his face…
Then FALL AGAIN a month later… working on the same pitch…
Before coming up with a method so brilliant as it is simple… to SELL MILLIONS worth of a trading advisory… maybe there’s a lesson in it for you too… whether you’re writing a pitch for a $50 product or a $5,000 one. [Read more…]
Talk about an irresistible headline…
This bookalog may be from yesteryear but the product is still front burner HOT and sells like hotcakes to this day.
The Drugs No Senior Should EVER Take
The shocking BLACKLIST of dangerous medications
Congress confirmed it, a top medical journal published it -and the medical profession almost totally ignores it! See page 7. [Read more…]
Insurance boasts some of the greatest lead generation and compelling offers of any category in advertising.
It’s surely due for a category of its own here.
This ad by Sun Life ran as a full page insertion in British tabloids in 1987.
The personal letter with the EYE CATCHING handwriting snippet is not seen much these days in print or online.
It’s a GREAT way to get prospects into the copy and worth a test. [Read more…]
In May of 2018, I gave a presentation to Perry Marshall’s peeps.
Up until a few days before the webinar, I was stuck.
What could I talk about that would be RELEVANT, but almost unknown to most?
Ah, AdWords On Paper!
Yes, I know it’s not 2005 anymore and Perry’s gone waaaay beyond Adwords, as Evolution 2.0 makes plain. Yet, I miss those bygone days when you could pick up the phone and reach Perry on his mobile.
This press ad is taking off like a rocket.
My friend, Jeff McGeary, is the powerful pen behind this super supplement from Doctor Al Sears.
Why is this ad so hot at the time of this writing in April of 2021? I’ll take a stab at it. [Read more…]
This may not be a high ticket offer, but it boasts a strong PRESTIGE appeal in the mold of the Bonner Private Portfolio.
“I’d like to invite you to join us at special kind of “round table.”
At this table, you’ll meet millionaire businessmen and best-selling writers, gold and currency experts, market historians and economists. [Read more…]
There are several great things about mail order that will never go away.
First off, a GREAT direct mail package that lands in the RIGHT prospect’s hands creates a private bubble… FREE of the myriad of digital distractions that surround online and mobile media.
Second, the life span of a hard hitting direct mail package can be weeks or even months. Norman Rentrop told me someone once replied to one of his newspapers ads 17 years after the date it was published! Compare that with a fleeting Facebook ad or a lone email in a prospect’s jammed inbox.
Third, there’s the money in the dark element of direct mail. Everything that hits the Web, whether it’s a Facebook campaign or a hot VSL (video sales letter) is subject to THEFT.
“Dumb marketers invite copycatting by putting what they’re doing out there so visibly even fools can’t help but notice it, assume it’s working and knock it of.”
Topping it off is the ability to put a MOAT around your product… as long as you do NOT offer it for sale on Amazon. There’s no way for the prospect to go price shopping… or digging up reviews… which in some cases, competitors can do a “drive by” on to tarnish your product’s reputation.
This is textbook “anti-search” marketing… arriving at a friendly mailbox near you in 2021.
The Real Cause of Aging and Illness Discovered
“A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen.”
Gary “the Great” Bencivenga laid this zinger on the direct response world in 2004 in his Bullets and expanded on it in his Retirement Seminar, a year later. (I’m looking at the quarter ounce Krugerrand from the “Guess the Winner” headline contest, as I type this.)
It’s thanks to Rosser Reeves, via Gary, that this gem is widely known.
It sure helps having a blockbuster product when it comes to keeping controls kicking, even 14 years later. [Read more…]
Caples on Copy, published in 1978, was part of the brilliant “The Wall Street Journal. It Works.” campaign.
This print ad is like getting a bite size version of Tested Advertising Methods. (Note: the 4th edition or earlier of that book is the way to go because later editions include an ivory tower ad man.)
There’s all kinds of timeless wisdom in this ad like: [Read more…]
There’s no one size fits all in copy or marketing, but there sure are plenty of universal principles that are as close as it gets to “money in the bank.”
Here’s one of my favorite direct mail promoters who is riding HIGH during the covid chapter… hopefully closing soon. [Read more…]
I’d give my eyeteeth to head out for a marketing seminar after years of cooling my heels — especially after the tediously long year of 2020. I came upon this seminar program just yesterday in my archive room.
The late Corey Rudl hosted this memorable seminar in Los Angeles in September of 2004. [Read more…]